Comments on: Balancing act

Balancing act

oissubke — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 00:07:14 -0800

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:20:27 -0800

You have cut the deficit by $1.27 billion. Your new deficit is $355.73 billion. Yay! I cut the deficit! Do I get to keep a percentage of the savings...? And I did it by raising military & judicial spending, cutting environmental & general administrative spending, and leaving the tax cuts in place. Heh.

By: falconred

falconred — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:32:19 -0800

Yes, yes I can. Cut military spending, citizent tax cuts, and corporate tax breaks. Hold everything else even. Voila!

By: Ignatius J. Reilly

Ignatius J. Reilly — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:38:39 -0800

Never, ever let me near the federal treasury. I managed to soak the hell out of everyone but me taxwise, and I still blew my entire wad and them some blowing up Iraq a couple times.

By: kevspace

kevspace — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:42:16 -0800

I think a better question would be, "can anyone NOT balance the budget?" The rest of this paragraph is so damn obvious, it chose to erase itself rather than partake in partisan *VOORP*

By: dagny

dagny — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:28:14 -0800

Let's see, eliminate agricultural, environmental and welfare spending... yup.

By: reklaw

reklaw — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 05:59:02 -0800

Your new deficit is $-42.15 billion. Oops! You've cut so much that the federal budget now contains a substantial surplus. Many economists warn that this budget may help induce or prolong a recession, and ordinary citizens demand a refund. You might want to cut taxes or raise spending. Hmm, all I did was eliminate military spending: I didn't touch anything else. Could probably re-balance the budget by spending that surplus on education and health, or giving the poor some tax cuts as well as the ones I left the rich guys with.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 06:24:02 -0800

just for an arbitrary look at a world-without-W, I eliminated the tax cuts and spending on the war and rolled back defense spending and corporate tax breaks and got a $21 billion dollar surplus.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 06:54:38 -0800

I'm trying to figure out roughly how much each tax payer would get if the hypothetical surplus was given back as a rebate of some sort, but I'm not sure how to find out how many people in america actually pay. I looked up the us population in the cia world fact book and got 193,690,028 people aged 15-64 and worked it out to about $103 per person, but obviously not everyone in that group has to pay their income tax, etc. any ideas?

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 10:54:47 -0800

You have cut the deficit by $434.73 billion. Your new deficit is $-77.72 billion. Well, that was easy. Less than five minutes, and I didn't even have to take any meetings, or attend a press conference.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 11:13:19 -0800

Yay I cutted 7 billion out of the deficit :) What do I win ?!

By: Hypharse

Hypharse — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 12:15:25 -0800

Old budget was $3274.734 billion ($2292.807 billion in spending, $981.927 billion in tax expenditures and cuts). New budget is $176.4 billion ($176.4 billion in spending, $0 billion in tax expenditures and cuts). You have cut the deficit by $3098.33 billion. Your new deficit is $-2741.32 billion. I rock. Elect me. I can cut the deficit by 3 trillion dollars.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 12:41:03 -0800

and now for the other side of things! this time I implemented a 50% increase in military spending and in the war in Iraq (but none for retirement); eliminated non-defense energy, enviromental, medicare, welfare, and social security spending; cut agriculture, transportation, community and regional development, education, non-medicare health, and employer-paid health insurance spending by half, and added 20% to both tax cuts, coporate tax breaks, and personal business & investment benefits. You have cut the deficit by $950.73 billion. Your new deficit is $-593.72 billion. WOW! that's enough to cut everyone in my arbitrarily defined group of tax payers $3,065, which can be somewhat used to put one child through a year of private school at an average cost of $3,116 since public schooling is pretty much out of the question, figuring in how bad they are now plus the sanctions of losing half of their budget. that is, assuming one of the three global ubercorporations that are capitalism is this little scorched earth scenario don't goudge the prices.

By: Veritron

Veritron — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:01:41 -0800

I cut everything in natural resources and environment, agriculture (the damn farmers can go pound sand with the rest of us), social security (I figure that'll also make medicare cheaper to pay for when all the damn old people end up starving to death), net interest, tax cuts (OH NO, THE SUPER RICH ARE GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH WITHOUT THEIR TAX CUTS), and corporate tax breaks (I figure killing industry will fix the pollution problem). Old budget was $3251.488 billion ($2264.172 billion in spending, $987.316 billion in tax expenditures and cuts). New budget is $2255.11 billion ($1551.1 billion in spending, $704.01 billion in tax expenditures and cuts). You have cut the deficit by $996.38 billion. Your new deficit is $-639.37 billion. Yay! I just saved a trillion dollars a year.